Material appropriate for young adults
In 1814 London, Gretchen must put aside annoyance at the constant buzzing caused by being a Whisperer, concern about her twin brother, her growing feelings for a member of the Order of Iron Nail, and the boredom of being a debutante when a new menace threatens Mayfair.
Rose and her parents have been going to Awago Beach since she was a little girl. It’s her summer getaway, her refuge. Her friend Windy is always there, too, like the little sister she never had, completing her summer family. But this summer is different. Rose’s mom and dad won’t stop fighting, and Rose and Windy have gotten tangled up in a tragedy-in-the-making in the small town of Awago Beach. It’s a summer of secrets and heartache, and it’s a good thing Rose and Windy have each other.
In the two years since his mother left him with his grandparents in Des Moines, Washington, Sam has avoided making friends and perfected the art of being a slacker, but being paired with a frightening new student for a slam poetry unit transforms his life.
Zenji Watanabe, seventeen, is sent from Hawaii to the Philippines to spy on the Japanese during World War II and, after he is captured and tortured, must find a way to survive months of being lost in the jungle behind enemy lines.
Road maps; sailor’s charts; quilts; song lines; gilded parchment covered with jewel-like colors; computer printouts – to guide us through the strange, vast, beautiful, and mysterious frontiers of the world of maps, Val Ross presents the men and women who made them. Here are some of the unexpected stories of history’s great mapmakers: the fraud artists who deliberately distorted maps for political gain, Captain Cook, the slaves on the run who found their way thanks to specially-pieced quilts, the woman who mapped London’s streets, princes, doctors, and warriors. These are the people who helped us chart our way in the world, under the sea, and on to the stars. With reproductions of some of the most important maps in history, this extraordinary book, packed with information, is as fascinating and suspenseful as a novel.
Sixteen-year-old Gabi Hernandez chronicles her senior year in high school as she copes with her friend Cindy’s pregnancy, friend Sebastian’s coming out, her father’s meth habit, her own cravings for food and cute boys, and especially, the poetry that helps forge her identity.
Seventeen-year-old Masi Burciaga’s barrio becomes more like a ghost town every day, but when she and other youths are recruited to erect a giant pyramid in hopes of attracting tourists, she wonders about the entrepreneur behind the scheme–and his attractive son.
Seventeen-year-old “Hank” has found himself at Penn Station in New York City with no memory of anything—who he is, where he came from, why he’s running away. His only possession is a worn copy of Walden by Henry David Thoreau. And so he becomes Henry David—or “Hank”—and takes first to the streets, and then to the only destination he can think of—Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts.
Cal Armistead’s remarkable debut novel is about a teen in search of himself. Hank begins to piece together recollections from his past. The only way Hank can discover his present is to face up to the realities of his grievous memories. He must come to terms with the tragedy of his past, to stop running, and to find his way home.
When Elizabeth spots an antique doll dressed in a soldier’s uniform at a local garage sale, she thinks that it might be a good last-minute birthday gift for her dad, who’s about to ship out to the Middle East. In finding the doll, Elizabeth has become the latest link in a chain of love and loss that began in England during World War I, when a young woman gave the doll to her fiancée before he left to join the fighting in Europe.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 7, Issue 1
In 1945, at the end of World War II, Adolf Eichmann, the head of operations for the Nazis’ Final Solution, walked into the mountains of Germany and vanished from view. Sixteen years later, an elite team of spies captured him at a bus stop in Argentina and smuggled him to Israel, resulting in one of the century’s most important trials — one that cemented the Holocaust in the public imagination.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 7, Issue 1